Vaporizer Efficiency

Here is some info regarding vaporization that I thought may be interesting to some people.

I recently bought a Vaporizer, a V-Tower Extreme, which I am very happy with. This is not my first vaporizing experience as I have been vaporizing for over ten years now. This is the first "commercial" vaporizer that I have bought myself. All of my past personal vaporizing devices have been many various homemade devices from basic heat guns, to using a butane soldering gun with a modified ceramic heating element, to using various heating elements making a "globe" type vaporizer and even a homemade version of a vapor box.

I have always wondered how much weight is lost in the herb, which would give an estimate of the amount of the active ingredient that you are trying to vaporize. I attempted to leach out as many unwanted ingredients as I could in order to isolate the active ingredient and to get the best possible estimate of its percentage weight. I did this first by boiling the herb, (in its original form, before grinding) in water for a few minutes to leach out any water soluble ingredients, since the active ingredient in the herb is not water soluble. This is actually a technique, that some of you may have heard of, that makes the smoke or vapor much smoother to inhale because most of the water soluble ingredients are what makes inhaling it "harsh". Doing this does not decrease the potency of the herb because the active ingredient is not water soluble and I have verified this many times by a direct comparison between the same herb boiled and unboiled. I then let the herb lay out to dry for several days until it was crispy dry. Then I grinded the herb up once and then laid this out for another day or two to get it as dry as possible in the open air. Finally I placed the herb in a 200* oven for a few minutes until I thought every last amount of water was evaporated from the herb so there would be no water weight left in the herb that would also add to the weight lost during the vaporization process. I then ground the herb again to make it even finer.

The name of the herb used is the same as a "Black Widow" spider, only its "White".:hail: I took an original sample of 20 grams and kept it stored in a mini mason jar to insure that the amount of moisture absorbed from the air during the time it took to vaporize, was kept to a minimum. I vaporized the herb using the V-tower Extreme with the temperature set at 230*C/446*F using the bag system with the fan set at low. The herb was vaporized until, what I would call "complete" in my experience, which leaves the herb medium to dark brown in color almost like tobacco. I also viewed the herb under a microscope to ensure it appeared like other samples I have viewed in the past, that I thought were "complete". Each experience was no different then using the herb at anytime in the past, nor was the amount used to achieve this experience, any different then the amount used in the past. After each vaporization, the "completed" herb was again stored in a mini mason jar, until all of the 20 grams had been vaporized. I made sure to clean the bowl completely so that all of the used herb was collected. I then weighed the sample at the end to see what the total amount of ingredients were vaporized to give me an approximate percentage weight of the active ingredient. The weight of the sample was 16.48 grams. Divide 16.48 by 20 and you get .824 which means the percentage weight of the ingredients vaporized was .176 or 17.6% by weight.

Now when you look at what the starting sample and ending sample looks like, before and after vaporizing and see that you still have 16.48 grams of something in that jar, it can be hard to accept that it is used, but people have said that an herb of this variety is known to contain about 18% of the active ingredient, which this experiment has verified. I have also used other ways to estimate the amount of active ingredient of this same herb and I found similar results.

So if you are ever sitting there, looking at the ashtray that you have dumped your "used" vaporized herbs in, don't feel like you may have missed something, because more then likely, the herb doesn't contain a large percentage of the active ingredient you are looking for to begin with.

Now I know that this is not an "exact" experiment since there may be other ingredients that are vaporized, because their vapor temperature is at or below the temperature used to vaporized the desired ingredient. This is why I attempted to eliminate as many of those as I could. As I said, I have done many different experiments to estimate the active ingredients in herbs as well as many ways to verify that a herb is completely vaporized, by microscope and other techniques, to make sure that as much of the active ingredient has been extracted as possible and these results are in line with many of these other experiments. I have also had many a test done on a herb that I thought was used, by having someone else see if they can get anything out of the herb and believe me, you want nothing to do with what is left when I am done with it LOL.

I hope you find this informative. I am not claiming that this is anything "official", I just thought that some of you may find it interesting so I am sharing my results with everyone. If you have done anything similar, please share that with us. Hope you enjoy.

With the Extreme the display temp may not be the vaping temp. The first version displayed the actual heater temp. Then the heat sensor was moved closer to the bowl-twice. So there are 3 different versions to that vape.

This post was not meant to be specific to the vaporizer used. It was meant to show the efficiency of the vaporization process in general.

I think that most vaporizers that have a temperature display can have a great variance for the ideal temperature depending on the vaporizer manufacturer. We know what the ideal temperature should be set at, but since the location of the temperature sensor varies between vaporizer types, the temperature your vaporizer works best at will probably be different between different manufacturers and even between two different vaporizers, of the same kind.

I use 446*F with my V-Tower Extreme, because first it states in the instructions that the temperature reading on the display is the reading of the core and that this temperature is higher then the temperature where "vaporization" is taking place. I have also used this vaporizer on every degree setting from 190*C/374*F to 260*/500*F and 230*C/446*F is what I thought was the best balance between the vapor density and the harshness of the vapor. I also based this on my past experience, using many different vaporization techniques and devices and the appearance of the used material, both with the naked eye and multiple different visual enhancement devices.

Personal vaporizer temperature preferences vary as greatly as your personal herb preference and arguing which is best is pointless, otherwise we would only have one type of vaporizer and herb and not have the great variety and choices we have today. The post's detailed information was given to try to answer any questions that I thought may have come up in regards to the method used etc. The information was given to show that all the used herb that we all throw away as a result of the vaporization process, is actually just as useless as the ash we would throw out if we smoked the herb, because the amount of weight lost during the vaporization process is very close to the percentage weight that a herb of this type and quality are claimed to contain.

Now I know some may argue about the amount of active ingredient a certain herb may contain, but again, this was not meant to verify or argue any point. I just did an experiment that I thought was interesting and I thought others mind find it interesting as well. I gave the details of what I did along with my past personal experiences to reinforce my findings, by showing that this was not done by someone that just starting using and vaporizing herbs. If you feel that anything was done incorrectly or you disagree with the results, then please try a similar experiment and share your results with us. I know that I can always learn something new and if your results are different, there may be something new for me to learn, so please share the results.

I am in the process of a similar experiment only this time I will using the fine dust that is shaken from your favorite herb that some people call "kif". This will be done with the same type of herb, using the collection from a first pass shaking, using a standard type shaking box with fine silkscreen that yields a product that is a nice cream to light olive in color, which appears as "clear" crystals and balls, under a microscope. I started with a sample of 10 grams and will report the weight of the used material when I have used it all.:angel: